d come when a blow should be struck for its
deliverance by the ablest soldier that had ever shown himself in those
regions, one whom the commonwealth had watched over from his cradle.

For in Groningen there was still a considerable party in favour of the
Union, although the treason of Renneberg had hitherto prevented both city
and province from incorporating themselves in the body politic of the
United Netherlands. Within the precincts were five hundred of Verdugo's
veterans under George Lanckema, stationed at a faubourg called
Schuytendiess. In the city there was, properly speaking, no garrison, for
the citizens in the last few years had come to value themselves on their
fidelity to church and king, and to take a sorry pride in being false to
all that was noble in their past. Their ancestors had wrested privilege
after privilege at the sword's point from the mailed hands of dukes and
emperors, until they were almost a self-governing republic; their courts
of justice recognizing no appeal to higher powers, even under the
despotic sway of Charles V. And now, under the reign of his son, and in
the feebler days of that reign, the capital of the free Frisians--the men
whom their ancient pagan statutes had once declared to be "free so long
as the wind blew out of the clouds"--relied upon the trained bands of her
burghers enured to arms and well-provided with all munitions of war to
protect her, not against foreign tyranny nor domestic sedition, but
against liberty and against law.

For the representative of the most ancient of the princely houses of
Europe, a youth whose ancestors had been emperors when the forefathers of
Philip, long-descended as he was, were but country squires, was now
knocking at their gates. Not as a conqueror and a despot, but as the
elected first magistrate and commander-in-chief of the freest
commonwealth in the world, Maurice of Nassau, at the head of fifteen
thousand Netherlanders, countrymen of their own, now summoned the
inhabitants of the town and province to participate with their fellow
citizens in all the privileges and duties of the prosperous republic.

It seemed impossible that such an appeal could be resisted by force of
arms. Rather it would seem that the very walls should have fallen at his
feet at the first blast of the trumpet; but there was military honour,
there was religious hatred, there was the obstinacy of party. More than
all, there were half a dozen Jesuits within the town,